War, Crises, & Spiritual Birth Pains

In my recent conversation with author, translator and “spiritual historian” (my term) Terry Boardman, we started with current world events and their background.

(You can watch the whole thing here - it’s long! But the first hour was a very good intro to the history of the conflict in Iran)

But as often happens, we ended up in very different territory looking at the evolution of human consciousness and how current events can be seen as symptoms of what is occurring within the human being and the spiritual world “behind” these events.

The simplest way to put this might be: history is an unfolding dialogue between human consciousness and the world.

Looked at in this way, could we see world events such as wars, pandemics, (or plan-demics), natural disasters, and even personal crises as the impetus for us to awaken our own individual, spiritual capacities?

I know, I know. This can also sound a lot like spiritual bypassing. “It’s all good man, no matter how much you’re suffering, it’s all for your spiritual growth”. Tell that to someone in a war zone or to someone who has lost someone close to them or to someone in the middle of an intense depression.

But when it comes to our own struggles, perhaps we can be allowed to at least open up the question.

The idea that our sufferings are serving our spiritual or moral growth and understanding is expressed beautifully by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who, when looking back on his time in a Soviet prison, was able to say the following:

“It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.”

But of course, we can usually only do this in retrospect. During a crisis it may well be possible to think “this will all be over one day and I’ll look back with gratitude on what I learned” but the very fact we can’t fully feel that in the middle of the situation is the very pressure which forces us to grow and brings about the development. Knowing this doesn’t necessarily make it easier though.

Another way to view these crises we experience as individuals and as societies is to compare them to birth pains.

In the New Testament in the Gospel Matthew we read:

“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains” (Matthew 24:7,8)

Who or what is it that’s being born?

Could it be our very selves?

by Michael (Mick) Young

Part 2 coming soon….

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